Playing for time

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Commercial AM radio relies heavily on talkback to make up its
content. It can be entertaining, but it's a low-cost, and somewhat
lazy, way to fill the airwaves.

The presenter scans newspapers for the best stories of the day,
adopts a position firmly on one side of the debate, and lets
callers do the rest, rushing to agree or disagree. So it is
refreshing when a talkback station comes up with something a little
extra, even if the idea is hardly original.

Take 2UE's new Saturday Night Live, hosted by Stuart
Bocking, who some will recognise as the producer of the John Laws
morning program, referred to on-air as "the co-driver". Bocking has
dug deep into 2UE's archives, lying idle in the ground-floor
library at the Greenwich studios for years, and found a treasure
trove of nostalgia.

Concentrating on the 1960s, '70s and '80s, he chooses a year
from each of the decades and looks at news events, film releases,
hit songs, visiting celebrities, sporting moments and scandals from
that time. This is interspersed with calls from listeners wanting
to share their memories of the event or to debate what really
happened.

Bocking has unearthed Sir Robert Menzies' famous line about the
Queen, "I did but see her passing by", architect Joern Utzon
talking about the Sydney Opera House when it opened in 1973, a
young Stan Zemanek calling the America's Cup finish in 1983, a
young Mike Carlton interviewing Johnny O'Keefe shortly before the
singer died in 1978, the Beatles performing a live version of
Please, Please Me on their 1964 tour, and the song used to
promote the conversion to decimal currency in 1966, sung by Ian
Turpie.

"You're really restricted only by your imagination," Bocking
says. "2UE started the Top 40 in Australia so there are all these
interviews with bygone singers - Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Frank
Sinatra and Neil Sedaka - and because 2UE has always been a
news-oriented station there is a lot of material that other
stations wouldn't have."

Saturday Night Live is not the only nostalgia program on
radio - Jonathan Coleman's My Generation and Bob Rogers's
Saturday Night Reminiscing touch on similar material - but
Bocking says his show is not prerecorded and so gives listeners the
chance to contribute on air.

"One caller remembered dancing a barn dance with Menzies and
another had won tickets from 2UE to tour the Opera House three
weeks before it opened," he says. "When we covered 1985, a caller
remembered winning the Melbourne Cup that year after he backed What
a Nuisance. So we found the race and played it to him."